Justice Antonin Scalia's Last Opinion
CRS Reports & Analysis Legal Sidebar Justice Antonin Scalia’s Last Opinion 03/15/2016 Justice Antonin Scalia wrote his last opinion for the Court in a capital punishment case, Kansas v. Carr. There, the Court reversed two decisions of the Kansas Supreme Court and held that “the Eighth Amendment [does not] require . capital-sentencing courts to instruct the jury that mitigating circumstances need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” It also held that the Eighth Amendment did not require separate trials for two of the defendants in one of the Kansas cases. The defendants in one of the cases, the Carr brothers, were convicted of “4 counts of capital murder, 1 count of attempted first-degree murder, 5 counts of aggravated kidnaping, 9 counts of aggravated robbery, 20 counts of rape or attempted rape, 3 counts of aggravated criminal sodomy, 1 count each of aggravated burglary and burglary, 1 count of theft, and 1 count of cruelty to animals” as part of one crime spree. Reginald Carr was also convicted of kidnaping, aggravated robbery, aggravated battery, and criminal damage to property committed on another occasion. Both Reginald and Jonathan Carr were convicted of first-degree felony murder in connection with yet a third episode. The defendant in the second case, Gleason, was convicted of two counts of capital murder, aggravated kidnaping, aggravated robbery, and criminal possession of a firearm. Defendants in both cases were sentenced to death, and in both cases the Kansas Supreme Court vacated their sentences on Eighth Amendment grounds. The Kansas court’s Gleason decision acknowledged an apparent conflict with U.S.
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